White House stands by alleged anti-nuke fatwa in Iran

Oct. 1, 2013
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Iranian president Hasan Rouhani waves to supporters as his motorcade leaves Tehran's Mehrabad Airport upon his arrival from New York on Saturday. Some in crowd clhanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." / Atta Kenare, AFP/Getty Images

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

President Obama's claim that Iran is disposed toward ending its nuclear standoff because of a legal pronouncement by its leader may be a hoax, according to a Middle East research group.

Some critics warn that Iran's offer to hold talks over its nuclear program is a ruse, to stall for time while it finishes up the fuel enrichment process for an atomic bomb. Others say Iran is also hoping to halt attempts by Congress to strengthen U.S. economic sanctions.

But President Obama welcomed Iranian President Hasan Rouhani's promise not to seek nuclear weapons and told reporters the negotiation offer was worth pursuing.

"I do believe that there is a basis for a resolution (because) Iran's supreme leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons," Obama told reporters.

But a Washington-based Middle East research group says there is no evidence such an edict exists.

"An exhaustive search of the various official websites of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei turned up no such fatwa, either on his fatwa website or on his personal website," according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, which tracks and translates news and official reports from the region.

MEMRI says the fatwa was first mentioned by Sirius Naseri, an Iranian representative to a meeting of the U.N.'s nuclear agency in 2005. It was later mentioned in 2012, in an opinion piece in The Washington Post by Iran's then-foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, and in Iran's Mehr news agency by the head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani.

But MEMRI says it appears the Iranians were not telling the truth, according to its president, Yigal Carmon.

"It's a whole campaign," Carmon said. "They cannot deliver anything real, so they deliver a story about the fatwa but they don't really have it."

Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for Obama's National Security Council, said the president's comment stands. When asked why the White House believes the fatwa exists, Hayden declined to comment.

Former secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in 2012 that she discussed the fatwa with experts and religious scholars and with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan after he'd visited Iran.

Khamenei has said multiple times since 2003 that nuclear weapons are un-Islamic, according to National Public Radio. But the United States and others say Iran is producing far more enriched uranium than is needed for anything other than the making of a bomb.

Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says the fact that the fatwa was never written down is irrelevant because Islam is a religion where oral rulings can be more important than written ones.

"There have been several famous fatwas that nobody ever had the text of and are still considered binding," Clawson said. "The more substantial criticism is fatwas can change when the circumstances change, and that the Islamic Republic can disregard religious principles for its own preservation."

"It could be entirely appropriate for the supreme leader to say nuclear weapons are not appropriate, they're against our religion except for if we're threatened by people with nuclear weapons," he said.

The supreme leader has said "as a general principle during the Iran-Iraq war that Muslims must have the most advanced weapons that their enemies possess," Clawson said.

Also, Khamenei's predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic regime, and other Iranian leaders have said "on many occasions that they have a right to and should violate principles of Islamic law if it means the preservation of the Islamic republic," Clawson said.